


Hiraeth

by Whreflections



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU Claudia Stilinski Death, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Blood Drinking, Full Shift Werewolves, Human/Vampire Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, John is in Love with two people and they both know, Kid Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Post-World War II, Pre-Slash, Recovering Alcoholic John Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Vampire Chris Argent, World War II, dubious consent blood drinking, ish, it's not quite poly but adjacent, or at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:01:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: hiraeth (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your pastSomewhere, there is a world where Chris took a stolen moment of peace in the chaos of the Western Front to agree with John that they could make it work after the war, that it wouldn't be so bad to be what they were so long as they stayed together.Somewhere, there is a world where Claudia didn't die, and she and John raised their son to adulthood together.  Maybe they even had another one.This world is neither of those.  It's messier, unevenly divided, and full of wanting. rough edges and sore places.  It's all that this Chris knows.
Relationships: Chris Argent/Sheriff Stilinski, Claudia Stilinski/Sheriff Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 40
Kudos: 38





	1. Beacon Hills, 10/60  [Chris + Stiles, T]

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I have a very clear idea for a verse, but not a plot for a 'full length' story...or at least, not one that I have/plan on at the moment. 
> 
> This is also what happens when I have a brand new computer and I'm thrilled I can write properly again for the first time since like, October. 
> 
> This will all be very freeform, moving around in time within this verse to show glimpses of different points, but what you really need to know is this-
> 
> Chris Argent is a vampire, and has been since the French Revolution. He fell in love with John Stilinski during World War II, but it was not the best era to be an out gay/bisexual man, and what they had during the war sifted back down to friendship when John came home and married the girl he'd loved since he was a kid. He really did love her, and they really were happy- but he never stopped loving Chris, either, and after she dies, that changes everything. 
> 
> Chris let him go once, when he thought it was better for him. He won't do it again. 
> 
> (Also, that's going to put him in just the right position to be aware when his kid starts hanging around with werewolves- but that comes later.) 
> 
> (Also also, the rating does not apply yet, but I know it will, so it's there.)
> 
> (Also^3- this is MrsRidcully's fault and I hope she enjoys any of this mess that ends up here XD <3)

Chris had been invited into this house the week after the honeymoon—he remembered how the feel of it had shivered down his spine like a trail of water, both warm and chilling. He’d been welcomed into hundreds of buildings, but it had never meant so much to feel the restriction lift, to know he was free to pass into space that belonged to the man he loved more than he had anyone since he’d lost Allison.  
  
The permission was old now and it didn’t feel the same, but there was still something so settling about breathing air in a place where he’d been welcomed, a different taste to it, a different weight. Even his steps felt different, as if he moved on hallowed ground. For him, he supposed, it was something close to it—it was John’s ground, and John was the center of everything, for him. In the early days, he would have specified that John was the center for _it_ , as if his instincts were in themselves another man, as if half of who he was was little more than a parasite, but he hadn’t felt that disconnect in a long time.  
  
They were his instincts, his senses. His needs, and his fixation. John belonged to the monster, yes, but the monster was him. Chris had stopped fighting that years ago.  
  
Chris heard Stiles gasp before he saw the boy, his eyes wide and startled in the flickering grey of the TV light when Chris looked up to see them. The living room was dark beyond it, the hall dark- it was no wonder he didn’t recognize Chris, not at first.  
  
Chris held his hands up, slow and careful. “Stiles, it’s me. It’s alright.”  
  
It was strange to see him wary— it made Chris wonder not for the first time if at moments like this even those close to him could sense a bit of what he was, their bodies reacting out of their control to signals their mind couldn’t place. Stiles was frozen on his knees, half rocked back on his heels like he’d been ready to spring to his feet.  
  
“I locked the door,” he said, quiet but stubborn, firm like he’d like already said it to himself. “I didn’t forget.”  
  
The ache in Chris’ chest burned sharper than hunger ever did, rough and hard, sinking deep. “You didn’t forget; I have a key.” He did, somewhere, but it wasn’t on him. He was welcome here. His will could carry enough magical weight to do the rest. He kept his hands up until Stiles relaxed, and blinked. “It’s okay. I’ll lock it back, okay? I’m sorry I scared you.”   
  
“It’s okay. I just didn’t think you were coming back tonight. You just left last month,” Stiles said, softer, his eyes back on the floor in front of him. Drawing closer, Chris could see that he had an encyclopedia open on the carpet. He was reading about cheetahs— or playing with army men. One perched on the edge of the book, overlooking the black and white savannah at his feet. “Dad said you come back in your own time.”  
  
He could almost hear it in John’s voice, though Stiles’ wasn’t near old enough to sound like him. Still, they could have the same seriousness at times, and it was in him, then. If Chris was betting, he’d heard John say it more than once. The thought hung in his throat more than it probably should have, barbed and thick. “That was before,” Chris said. Standing over Stiles, he looked washed out in the unnatural light of the screen, _please stand by_ flickering in and out, out of time with a faint orchestra. He looked so small, younger than ten years. The decades had started to pass for Chris like the blink of an eye—he could hardly believe how much he’d missed of this one. “Things are different now; I just had a few things to take care of. I won’t be leaving again.”  
  
“Not anytime soon?”  
  
“Not ever.”   
  
For half a second, there was unveiled delight in Stiles’ eyes, but it couldn’t hold, replaced by suspicion so quick Chris almost smiled. He was so clever, this boy. It made him proud, when he really had no right to be. Not yet. He hadn’t been around enough to claim much of an influence.   
  
“Why? Because mom’s not here?”  
  
“Yes—but that doesn’t mean I had any kind of quarrel with your mother; I didn’t. I cared about her very much.” It was true, if half true solely for her importance to John and Stiles. He’d liked what he’d known of her and they’d gotten along well, but they’d never been close. Now, he wished he’d known her better. He wished a lot of things. “It only means you and your father need me here more now than I’m needed elsewhere. Do you understand?”  
  
“We’re okay. I can take care of dad.” If his eyes shone a bit too much in the light, his voice didn’t shake. Without the scent of salt on the air, Chris wouldn’t have been certain how much it hurt.   
  
“I believe you—“ Chris reached out, taking an unused army man from the nearby pile. He had his arms up, but no parachute. Chris turned him over and over along his fingers, slipping through his knuckles like a coin until Stiles was watching, distracted. “I believe you can, but do you mind if I help you? I’d like to take care of him, too.”  
  
Chris waited while Stiles thought it over, and didn’t rush him. When Stiles nodded and reached out to take the army man, their fingers met, Stiles’ curling for a moment through his.   
  
“You’re cold. You’re always cold.”  
  
“California at night. Blame the desert.”  
  
“It’s too far. Did you know—"  
  
“Blame the coast, then,” Chris said smiling. “Check with me in the middle of summer in the daylight.”

“You’re really staying?” Stiles asked with his eyes on his hands, like it didn’t much matter, like he wasn’t so focused his heartbeat had quickened. 

“I’m really staying.” Chris dropped down to his level, crouching low, and casting a shadow that stretched long and lean across the floor, reaching into the dark of the far corner, and fading out. “We can talk about it more tomorrow, but you need to go to bed.” 

“I did, but I can’t sleep when—” Whatever he’d been about to give up, he caught himself, and shook his head. The lie was in the rattling skip of his heart. “Dad can’t sleep, either.”

“So he knows you’re awake?”

“Not exactly. I just know he is—but I’m not bothering him.”

“If he knew you were awake, he wouldn’t call that bothering; he’d just haul your ass back to bed.” 

“You’re going to make me go to bed, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

It was strange, how the way he squirmed could look so annoyed, and so relieved. So much had changed since he’d had a little girl of his own, but so much hadn’t. Kids needed boundaries as much as they needed freedom—there was security in knowing they’d be called out, that decisions didn’t have to be up to them. They didn’t have to carry that weight yet. 

Chris roughed his hair, and kissed his temple. Breathing him in, he smelled like John, overlaid with the heavy soap of cheap shampoo, laced with a thin and fragile filament of fear. It wasn’t for Chris—the scent was old, and bitter, worn in. Likely, it hadn’t left him since he’d realized the way John drank, now, wasn’t the same as his dad having a glass after dinner, or even after he went to bed. 

Maybe it had been longer, since the hospital, when Claudia had gone in, or when he’d heard she wouldn’t be coming back out. 

Maybe on some level, it had been with him since the day she stumbled on the carpet, tripping over nothing. 

When Stiles stood, Chris hugged him tight against his side, one armed but lingering, squeezing closer when Stiles pressed in rather than pulling away. 

“Come on, kid. Bed. It’s _past_ time for bed.”

“But I—”

“Turn the TV off, and bring the book. I didn’t say you couldn’t finish the entry, but you’re doing it in bed.” 

It ruined the put upon sigh only a bit that Stiles had the TV off in seconds, plunging the room into darkness. It didn’t matter—even if it had been pitch black, it wouldn’t have mattered. With the meager light from down the hall and the moon through the windows, it was, for Chris, as bright as day, and he led them easily, one hand on Stiles shoulder as much for an anchor as for guidance. 

It was past time for bed, and past time for stories, but Chris settled himself onto the end of Stiles’ bed regardless, an encyclopedia balanced between his knees. 

“Do you want me to start at the beginning, or tell me where you stopped—or do you want me to tell you how a cheetah hunts, and why it’s interesting?”

In the glow of the lamp, the flicker of Stiles fascination was even more charming. “You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve seen many hunters—we all hunt a little differently, and those differences matter,” Chris said. In his mind, 1880 in French held Africa didn’t seem so long ago. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Allison squinting into the sun. “Cheetahs are terrible hunters.”

“But they’re fast! The book says—”

“It isn’t always how fast you move, but how you do it. Humans are predators, and to most of the natural world what they can do would be terrifying—do you know why that is?”

“Guns?”

Chris hummed, his hand tilting. “Yes, and no. Humans make tools, and that’s a threat, but even if they couldn’t, they’re persistence hunters.” There was, really, only so much he should talk about hunting. The back of his throat itched. Chris leaned forward, the book closed around his fingers, loosely held. “That means a human could follow their prey at a walk, and know that if they don’t stop, they’ll eventually catch it—because it may be faster, but they won’t give up. The best hunters have persistence. Without it, you lose prey. The more prey you lose, the worse off you are.” 

“The best hunters, so not just humans?”

“No. Not just humans.” 

“But not cheetahs?” Stiles asked, sliding down lower under the covers as he did. His mind never stopped, but the droop in his eyes showed that it was, at least, beginning to _want_ to. 

Chris settled the book onto the floor, and tucked the blankets up higher around Stiles’ shoulders. 

“Not cheetahs. They count on speed.”

“Like putting all your eggs in one basket.”

“Exactly like it—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t magnificent, and it doesn’t mean they always lose. That’s what makes hunting so interesting—sometimes you can do everything wrong and still catch what you wanted, or everything right and have nothing to show for it. Nothing is certain.”

“Sounds terrible.”

“It really isn’t.” 

“You’ve seen a cheetah before?”

“More than one. I saw a mother,” Chris said. He held the image in the back of his mind, dusty with time, though he could remember a hint of how they had smelled—sandy and with a shroud of death, the scent of old blood worn in to their mouths and their feet. Allison had wrinkled her nose, and smiled at their coats, and the chitter the mother made to the one that bit her tail. 

Left to her own devices and given long enough, Allison would have added to their family. If she hadn’t been taken from him, he wouldn’t have spent so much of his time alone—then again, if she hadn’t been taken from him, he likely never would have met John, either, would not have been in this little town in a little bedroom with a boy who might one day consider himself his hanging on his every word. 

Down the hall and behind a closed door, he could hear the labor of John’s breathing, the clink of glass. He could smell bourbon, both on the air and diluting blood he could have scented from half a mile away. He could smell the station on him, sweat and gunpowder and strangers. He was drinking alone in his room after he’d put Stiles to bed, and he hadn’t even bothered to undress. 

With half of him already down the hall, Chris tuned out the scent and the sound, and forced himself to stay in Africa with Stiles, under the heat of the sun, his skin burning acid sharp in his memory. 

The closer he drifted to sleep, the slower his pulse became, until Chris could hear the flow of his blood if he focused like the rustle of a stream, low and subtle and shifting. When it didn’t change at the touch of Chris’ hand to his temple, he turned out the light, and slipped out without a sound. 


	2. Leeds, 11/43 [Chris/John E]

So far tonight, the blackout curtains were open. Chris was grateful for that—both the lack of action, and the rare opportunity it provided. He didn’t often get to see John like this—relaxed, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, smoking out the window into the dark. The ease about him in everything from his scent to the lack of tension in the slope of his back was intoxicating. They didn’t spend their time in easy places, and there were always eyes on the both of them.

Leeds wasn’t easy, either, but it was easier than where they’d been, and the only eyes that could have glimpsed them were down on the street, with too much else to see. No one was watching; no one would see. They were functionally invisible, and the rush of it thrummed so deep in Chris’ chest that he gave himself as long as he could just to appreciate it, to feel so pressed with need that he could for a minute almost remember what it had been like to feel his lungs burn underwater at the moment before he broke the surface. 

When the sweet, sharp ache was a pressure he felt down the length of his spine, he stepped forward, relieving it by burying his face into John’s collar and breathing deep. The wrap of his arms around John’s waist was light, squeezing only when John leaned back into him. He smelled like smoke, worn in from the club where they’d watched friends and strangers dancing, mingled perfumes from the times they’d both danced with women who Chris couldn’t name even now. A touch of sweat, and a touch of alcohol. Neither of them were drunk, but neither one of them had been paying attention to their admirers. He wondered, sometimes, if anyone else could see that they had eyes for each other—he wondered if anyone else would know to look. They could hardly be the only ones, but he never looked up to see anyone else watching, never caught a spike of surprise or arousal in anyone else’s scent like he would have expected had they been figured out.

John’s hand dangled over the sill, the bright circle of the cherry burning in the dark. The turn of his head toward Chris was so slight, and still it sent a thrill up his spine that only amped higher when he spoke.

“Just knowing we have five days is already fucking with my head. Every time you looked at me tonight I wanted to touch you. Most of the time I know we can’t so I don’t expect it; I don’t let myself think about it but-“

Chris bit gently against the side of John’s throat, too low and distanced for the veins that tempted him, but hard enough with the blunted edge of human teeth for John to stop, his breath hitching. The ache in Chris’ jaw at the familiar pressure was bittersweet, his mouth watering with want, cock already filling where it pressed against John’s ass. It was dizzying, the desire to feed overlaid against the desire to _take_. It had been so long since he did both, and it had never felt like this. 

Nothing had ever felt like this, not in 150 years. 

The hiss of John putting the cigarette out sizzled against the brick sill, his hand curving back as soon as he’d let go to grip tight in Chris’ short hair. There was just enough for him to hold if he did it tight, the sting welcome as John craned his neck back to meet him in a kiss. The thrill of it sang through Chris’ veins almost like feeding, almost like changing. Their kisses were always stolen, often rough. They could never be certain they wouldn’t be disturbed, never be sure their privacy would last. He would know forever the harsh sound of John’s breath panting against his shoulder, the sting of his teeth when he kissed Chris hard and bit down to muffle himself when he came in Chris’ hand. 

When they paused, Chris nuzzled against his cheek, the slight rasp of his stubble enticing against John’s smooth skin. “I wanted you to touch me,” he murmured. “I always want you to touch me. I wanted to dance with you.”

“Have you done that?” John asked, pulling back enough for their eyes to meet. There was no dismissal in his surprise, only honest curiosity. He had grown up in a world of restrictions so tight he might never have known he could be attracted to a man if not for what had happened between them; he couldn’t know what it was like to live long enough for restriction to seem a transitory thing. The world was changing all the time, shaping itself to increasingly progressive hands. Someday, what John was wouldn’t bat an eye. 

That would never be true for Chris. Not now, or ever. He would always be an abomination. 

“Danced with you? No.” Chris’ smile at John’s fond exasperation crinkled the corners of his eyes. It felt strange even for him to feel so uninhibited. They had been in camps and bases under the gun for so long, now. It seemed an age since either of them had had time to breathe. Chris pressed a kiss to John’s cheek and stepped back and away from the window, invitation to follow in his eyes and the hand he held out. “I have danced with another man. It’s not that hard. Anyone can lead.”

“It’s not the leading, it’s-“ Even shaking his head, John was already stepping foreword, and taking his hand. His grip was sure. Chris could feel his callouses, the nearly healed cut near the heel of his hand where he’d sliced it in the middle of a hurried firefight. The scent of his blood pressed against the heat of the gun had been dizzying. “Isn’t this ever strange, for you? It never seems like it- and I’m not- you know I’m not ashamed, but isn’t it strange? Doesn’t it feel...”

“Off? No. Not for me. I’ve seen too many unnatural things in my life for a dance to rank. Dancing is natural.” It took only the barest force to coax John toward him, none at all to guide his hands. The faintest pink colored his cheeks, but the fierce determination in his eyes was breathtaking. When they had started this, Chris had wondered how careful he would have to be, whether John would ever be able to acknowledge aloud anything they’d done. For a boy out of his depth in a world that would not accept him, John’s bravery against both those conventions and the old walls he surely carried in his own mind was breathtaking. 

“Always so confident, sarge.” The way John said it could be filthy, could be teasing, could be as full of admiration as any of his men. He had layers of nuances, but just then his voice had wrapped around the word like an endearment. 

Chris laughed, and let John lead. It was only stilted for a moment, the off beat steps that came from finding both the rhythm of the music crackling from the radio on the table in the corner, and the rhythm of each other. They knew the movements of each other’s bodies in battle, the contortions of getting each other off in close quarters. They had never had the chance to match to each other so fluidly, so expansively. The room was tiny and the floor space was small, and still it felt somehow as open as a stage, room to step and shift and sway against each other. John only stepped on him twice. 

The man on the radio sung of magic and had likely never believed in it a day in his life, but Chris knew it like a promise down to his bones. There was no golden haze to what he was, not for him, not after losing Allison, and not after finding John. In the best world he could hope for, they might dance a hundred times more before Chris was left alone in a world with different music, the echo of the laughter of a young man he hadn’t been selfish enough to keep ringing in his ears. The uniform might change, if he went back to war, but he would look the same in it, his scars internal, invisible, his body propped up by the insidious constancy of magic. 

To chase the future back where it belonged, Chris tugged John closer still, and kissed him. It lingered, blended into another, until they’d stopped dancing and Chris was holding John’s face in his hands, delving deep, chasing the little soft sounds he could never help. They were music, too. 

They knew how to strip each other almost as quick and easy as their own clothes, but so often they stopped halfway—shirts open and hanging, pants dangling open. There was a sharp thrill in pushing John’s shirt to the floor, pulling out of his own boots and stepping out of his pants when John shoved at them. 

John hissed at the first press of their chests, his arms locking tight around Chris’ back to keep him from retreating. 

“You’re cold,” John said, breathless and soft. There was no suspicion in him, only concern. The soft curve of his smile promised his readiness to give himself up for heat, as readily as he would have built Chris a fire on the road. 

If Chris let himself consider how that beautiful mouth might curl in disgust if he knew the truth, the mood would be lost. Chris quashed it with ruthless force, and a kiss, the heat of John’s tongue so tempting against his. 

“It’s cold here. You’ll warm me up.”

“It’s just strange,” John murmured against his throat, his hands on Chris’ back curling to scratch light along his spine. “You’re usually so warm.”

The strangeness was only in the critical nature of points of reference—if he had met Chris in another way, in another life, he would have been like he was now far more often than he would have been warm. He had not fed so well or so often in decades as he did now that the enemy they faced offered him such a feast with so little twinge to his conscience. The Nazis showed no mercy; he had found their victims. Save for the terrified, out of place boys he let go, he had no qualms in making them his. The rush of feeling the added strength in his body, so full of blood and life that he ran hot, that was all secondary. Preying on men who took pleasure in preying on the weak was satisfaction enough. 

Their move weeks before to a base in southern England had been a move from feast to famine. The opportunities to feed on a victim he’d allow himself to claim had been so sparse he’d begun to avoid the hospital. His control was impeccable, but it wasn’t perfect. Some temptations were best avoided. 

Here in Leeds he would have more freedom, more chance to roam and find someone he could bear to take. It would be far easier here, with less scrutiny—but he hadn’t yet decided if he’d do it. Alone time with John was precious, hoarded. Against that treasure, the cold in his fingers and the burn in his throat was nothing more than an inconvenience, a tickle of thirst. John was his mate, and that nourished him on a level he wouldn’t have understood when all this began. He never knew how much it would mean to fill his lungs with a scent that felt like coming home, more than the house in Marseilles ever had, more than the cabin in Quebec. 

With a shove that made John laugh Chris had him on the bed, following quick to cover him. The force in his grip when he landed wrinkled the sheets. The hitch in John’s breath might have pulled him up short if the air hadn’t been so thick with the scent of his arousal, his hands eager and just as rough when he pulled Chris closer. 

John’s legs spread for him, an invitation so blatant that even the touch of hesitancy halfway through the motion couldn’t muddy it. They had never fucked; they’d never had time or opportunity. He wouldn’t do it right now, not even if John asked outright—not when they hadn’t gotten off together in over a week, not when John had never taken a man and was still tipsy. Not when Chris was hungry enough that the thought of the sounds John might make when he fingered him nearly made his fangs drop. 

He knew the vibration of John’s whimpers on his tongue and on his cock; he could imagine just how high and soft he might go for such an intrusion, how he might mewl and whimper and flush hot at the betrayal of his own throat. Chris would remind him; he was no less a man for taking pleasure. He was brave to want it, when everything he’d ever heard would have told him that even this, even opening his thighs to let Chris fit between them said something about his ability to carry a gun. 

Chris had seen him kill, and seen him decide not to. His bias changed nothing; he’d never served with a stronger, braver man. 

He rolled his hips, cock rutting first into the crease of John’s hip, shifting to nudge against John’s cock curving hard against his belly. It barely mattered that they weren’t fucking properly; this was new. The pulse in John’s throat was rabbit quick, the drag of his nails down Chris’ back so hard they stung.

“Fuck, sarge—Chris— it feels—“ The kiss that interrupted him was started by John, or himself; Chris couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter. John was rocking up against him; he could feel the tension in his thigh when his body shifted and one pressed hard against Chris’ hip. He couldn’t quite bring himself to wrap it around Chris’ waist, or his mind wasn’t working enough to manage it—it didn’t matter. It could have been awkward, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t need perfect coordination. 

“Yeah. Yeah; I know,” Chris murmured. “I know. It’s so much better, isn’t it?”

John’s nod was automatic, quick and mindless. The scent of his need flooded the air, the head of his cock leaking. “I want you to—”

“Not tonight.”

“But I want you to—”

“I will,” Chris said. His breath was heavy against John’s skin, his grip firm when he dragged his hand up John’s thigh and back again, a slow massage in time with the thrusts of his hips. “Soon. If that’s what you want, I’ll open you up and fuck you so deep you’ll feel it when we’re back on base. We don’t have anywhere to be right now, not for a few months. We can go back and they’ll never know you’re mine.” 

Later, he would wish he hadn’t said it. It wouldn’t matter; he couldn’t take it back. It was true, and in the moment it was out before he could stop it, and John didn’t disagree. 

Far from it.

“I am. I am yours. You saved me—”

“That’s not why—”

“No, but it’s part of it, of all of this—” Breathless, John surged up to kiss him, his teeth nipping so hard at Chris’ lip that if he’d been less hungry, John would have drawn blood. As it was, he nicked his own tongue; Chris could smell it. “You came after me when you shouldn’t have. I know what that means.”

 _Yeah, I love you. It means I love you_. 

It was true, and it was all more complicated. He wouldn’t have _wanted_ to let any of his men go without a fight. He’d probably have gone after any of them, but it wouldn’t have been the same. He wouldn’t have been desperate, and he wouldn’t have tipped his hand. 

In the weeks since he’d pulled John out of the snow in a clearing in the woods, he’d wondered what would become of the men on the fringes who glimpsed him, and lived to remember it. Would they go back to their commander with stories of a white eyed demon who bled their companions and carried off a man left for dead? Would they blame it on the spirit of the woods, enraged at the destruction they’d brought them? Would they carry the secret of the carnage they’d witnessed to their grave?

He wondered, but he hardly cared. It had been reckless, yes, but he’d become the source of a legend before. He could do it again. 

Chris chased down John’s blood, sucking on his tongue, his moans low and dark, rough and obscene. He tasted like spice and alcohol, like mulled wine of an unknown composition. It wasn’t even enough for a taste, and still his hips snapped hard, precome smearing between the two of them, his body on the edge. If a taste could make his head spin, what would a mouthful be like? What it would feel like if he turned his head, nuzzled into his throat to find himself welcomed, and—

With John distracted by pleasure, his head thrown back, Chris bit down on his own arm as he came. The needle sharp drive of his fangs into his own muscle jarred a shiver down his spine, but the pain passed almost as quickly as the euphoria. As soon as his body realized he wouldn’t be drinking, the fangs retracted, and he was left panting against his own healing skin. 

Beneath him, John arched, his cock aching until Chris took pity on him and took him into his hand. He came all over Chris’ chest with a groan, and it wasn’t until after that Chris realized he’d slipped one hand beneath himself, dry fingers pressed against his tight, fluttering hole. 

^^^^^^

In the dark, with the radio off, they shared a cigarette in bed. They were naked still beneath the blankets, half for the novelty—the room _was_ cold. Their legs were tangled; John’s head against his chest. Chris could have stayed in the moment another dozen years. 

“I know you don’t like to talk about it,” John whispered, his breath stirring the hair on Chris’ chest he liked to drag his fingers through. 

“Then let’s not talk about it.”

“—but this doesn’t have to stop. You know I’m not afraid—”

“I know you’re not afraid, and I never said you were. You’re not afraid of shit; that’s half of your problems.” Chris hadn’t meant for his voice to rise, but it had crept up past sleepy talking, past the unspoken rule of voices after midnight. He closed his eyes, and reined himself in. “This isn’t a choice for you to make. It doesn’t make sense. You have a girl back home who will be happy to take you back—”

“You don’t know that.”

“—I do; you’ll be a conquering hero, and she already loves you. And you love her; don’t try to tell me you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, too.” John sounded hurt, and Chris hated it. He hated making him look reality in the face; he hated the whole goddamn topic. It wasn’t just his own feelings he tried to spare by avoiding it; it was John’s, too. 

His fingers curled tight around the base of John’s skull, thumb pressing hard at the line of his spine. The firm kiss he pressed to his forehead before he handed over the cigarette felt like more of an apology than he could ever articulate. 

“I know you do—and you know I love you, too, but I can’t offer you what she can. That’s not dramatics or self loathing; I can’t, right out. After everything you’ve been through you’ve earned your white picket fence, and I won’t be the selfish bastard keeping you from it. I won’t. Not even if you’d be enough of a fool to let me.”

“And what if Claudia turns me down?”

“She won’t—but if she did, then you wreck your own future if that’s what you want.”

After a long drag, John turned to look at him, his chin pressing hard into Chris’ ribs in the dark. The faint glitter of his eyes in the light of the cigarette was otherworldly, wet and dark, their blue depths hidden in the dim.

“And what if I say no to her? What if I want to stay with you? I’m not as used to all this as you are; that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get used to it. As long as we have each other, I don’t give a damn—”

Chris covered his mouth. It was no surprise when John bit his fingers. 

“You want to know what I want? You want me to ask something of you? I want two things,” Chris said. John’s teeth were blunt, their grip soft. The press his of his lips to Chris’ knuckles when he lowered his hand was softer still. It was all the invitation to keep talking he was likely to get. “Tell me I always have a place with you. I want you to stick to the plan—but tell me that wherever you go, there’ll be a place for me where you are.”

He had never tried, before, to seek permission for an entire human being, to use that welcome to follow him anywhere he chose. He wasn’t sure it wouldn’t work; he wasn’t sure of anything, but he’d been turning it over in his mind for weeks, and the tightness in his chest that eased when John nodded felt like release. 

“Of course you do. You know that—”

“It’s different to hear it.”

“Isn’t there a Bible verse about that?” John drew the cigarette back to his mouth, sucked deep and scooted up to feed it into a kiss. The lazy comfort of it tingled all the way down to Chris’ toes. 

Chris nodded, his memories of the church in another life still too ingrained to lose. “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following you,” his throat tried to close. With a deep breath, he forced himself to swallow against it. The intimacy of John’s breath on his lips was grounding, and overwhelming. “For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

If he had a god, in all honesty, it was what he felt with John in his arms then, what he’d felt when he’d picked him up out of the snow and John had curled into him even covered in blood like he was something safe. 

John’s fingers curled into his hair, his skin warm when his forehead pressed against Chris’. “Alright, then. All of it—wherever I go, you belong there, too. I want you there with me.”

“I won’t be, not all the time, but part of me—part of me always will be. Part of me always is. Do you understand?”

“No,” John’s voice was flat, but the hurt was almost gone. Chris could swallow almost. “I don’t understand, but I don’t want to argue about it now.”

“I told you we shouldn’t talk about it.”

“What’s the other thing?” John leaned over to put what was left of the cigarette out in the ashtray, and settled down higher once he had, his face nuzzled into the hollow of Chris’ throat. His mouth traveled like it was looking for a pulse. As low on blood as he was, it would be far too thready to find. “You said two things. What’s the second?”

Chris tugged the blankets up higher around them, his hand coming to rest in the small of John’s back. He was so warm, his skin so soft. “This operation they’re planning, it’s going to be big.”

“No shit.”

“I want you to promise to stay behind me if it gets bad—don’t second guess me, don’t worry about me, and don’t ask me why. Can you do that for me?” 

“You really think I’m going to promise you anything without asking any questions?”

“You did a minute ago.”

“That was different—” He tried to pull away, for a second, but Chris grip was solid, and the blankets were high. As comfortable as they were, he’d barely struggled before he gave in to it, laying his head back down. “I’m not going to let you die for me, not if I can help it. That’s a promise I won’t make; I want us both coming out of this. You know I hate it when you say shit like that.” 

“We’re terrible at this, aren’t we?” Feeling John’s question in the silence, Chris squeezed his back, the tip of his nose nuzzling against the sandy blonde of his mate’s hair. “Pillow talk. It’s supposed to be nice.”

“It just takes practice. We’ll get it right.”

If his heart had held the skip of a lie, Chris wouldn’t have been surprised—but this was John. Ever determined, clever and unyielding. Once he believed, he was strong. Chris loved that about him, as much as he loved his humor, and his kindness. 

If he fell when Chris could have taken a bullet or ten to save him, he would never forgive himself. Not in two hundred years. 

He should have hunted, after John fell asleep. The window was still open; he would have no better opportunity for weeks. 

He should have hunted. 

When the sun came through the window, spilling slow across the sill then quick across the floor, his eyes were still on his lover, the mate he’d never asked for, and found anyway. To tide him over, it would have to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song the boys dance to is That Old Black Magic by Glenn Miller.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed this ^^


	3. Beacon Hills, 4/54 [Chris + Stiles, John/Claudia, Chris/John T]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I’m fully awake, I feel like this chapter should carry a couple warnings lol It’s not bad imo, but it’s probably a good idea to check the new tags and see if any will squick you out. Chris is a good boy, but he’s also a traumatized vampire and does vampire things occasionally lol I’ll put a spoilery note at the end in case anyone would like to check it.

Stiles’ breathing was shallow. All night, it had dipped lower and lower, interspersed with coughing, chased with little sounds that cut Chris down to his bones. If John had been home, he would have been pacing. He had nervous energy, sometimes; he always had— though it was nothing on the incessant ball of activity that was his son. 

That had been the first sign Claudia noticed. 

Yesterday, Stiles had wanted to come inside in the middle of his adventure. Bringing Stiles in for dinner usually involved bodily hauling him off the tire horse John had made him that hung in the backyard, already growing worn from use, or out of a tree, or out from under the crawl space. He struggled and negotiated right up until he could smell the food, except yesterday. He’d come in early, eaten half his dinner, and fallen asleep without even picking up his army men.

A single day, and already he looked so weak it was hard to imagine him climbing anything. 

From where Chris stood Claudia’s face was hidden, but he heard the shudder in her breath when she squeezed Stiles’ fingers, leaning closer to kiss his forehead. She lingered, checking his temperature, and the spike of her worry was so sharp Chris could taste it in the back of his throat. 

“It’s not polio,” Chris said. As quietly as he’d spoken, he’d made no move to hide his presence, but still he didn’t miss the minute her shoulders jumped. He never seemed to startle John, but that couldn’t be said of anyone else. “It’s something else.”

Her sniff wasn’t an answer. If not for the way she’d jumped, it would have been easy to believe she hadn’t noticed him at all. All her attention was for Stiles—caught up in the motions of smoothing his blankets, fussing with the collar of his shirt to check for a rash underneath. 

Chris came closer until he could lean on the wall at the foot of the bed, his voice lower still. “It’s not polio; you can trust me on that. I’ve seen it too often before.” More importantly, he’d smelled it, but he couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t describe the specific acrid tang of it, like boiling copper. It was wholly unpleasant, and still, it made the hunter in him sit up and take notice, driving an ache into the back of his jaw that he swallowed against. Sick children weren’t his type of prey. 

It had taken him lifetimes to accept that feeling that surge of saliva in his mouth didn’t say anything about who he was. The statement came in ignoring it, and moving on. 

With Stiles, it was easier than that. He smelled like John, yes, but he smelled like home, too—a hint of the burnt sugar smell Allison had carried, a hint of something dark and heavy he couldn’t name. It didn’t wake anything in his stomach, but it could make his fangs drop under the right circumstances—when Stiles was outside and unguarded, when Allison had gotten sick. 

Chris rubbed at his mouth, staving off the itching in his gums. 

On the bed, Claudia wiped her eyes on the heel of her hand one at a time, never taking her gaze off her son. “John’s the one that trusts you implicitly. He served under you long enough that anything out of your mouth is gospel, but I don’t have those same illusions—no offense; I’m sure you’re probably right—”

“But you want to be sure. You’re his mother.” Slowly, Chris settled onto the end of the bed. He was close enough to place his hand on Stiles ankle over the blanket. It felt too still, too small. “But I have to tell you, John doesn’t obey me as well as you think. I’m sure you know how stubborn he is.”

“I did marry him.”

They both laughed, hushed and mingling. The honey brown eyes that met his when she looked up were all Stiles to his mind, even though they’d been hers, first.

“I want you to be right. If he was worse, I’d take him to the hospital now—"

“Do you want to? We can put him in the car right now; we can have them leave a message for John at the station—and before you answer, don’t even think about the money. I’ve told John before, if he needs something—it isn’t even a question.” He had more money socked away here and there than he could ever know what to do with— if he thought he could have gotten away with it, he’d have given John his own account years ago. 

“He has his pride,” Claudia said. Her fingers were busy, tracing the edges of the blanket, squeezing light at Stiles’ shoulder before she felt his skin again. “Even with you. But for Stiles, I know he’d let that go, if we need to. Still, if he can wait to see his doctor on Monday, if he doesn’t get worse tonight or tomorrow—“

Her uncertainty was palpable, the scent of her anxiety sharp. She wasn’t his to worry about in the way John and Stiles were, and it couldn’t reach him the way Stiles’ little whimpers did, but still the taste of her fear in the back of his throat made him want to swallow until he chased it down. 

“If he doesn’t get worse, we’ll wait for the appointment. If he does—you let me know the minute you want to go and we’ll all go. You know I’m not leaving until he’s back to wreaking havoc.”

Her laugh was too wet, and too soft. For a minute, Chris almost touched her. His fingers tightened on Stiles’ ankle over the blanket instead. 

“He’s just so little. I think I could bear it if he wasn’t—but he’s hardly done anything. My grandmother said she never expected to keep all her children because you didn’t back then, but I can’t imagine—“ Her voice broke, and Chris hated how grateful he was that she hadn’t finished. 

He could imagine. He could _remember_. He held in his mind the taste of Allison’s blood on his tongue the time that he’d been able to save her, and the scent of far too much of it in the snow the time that he hadn’t. He had wondered, before, if that was part of why he’d lost it so completely when John was hurt in Italy—the wicked sharp familiarity of blood and snow taking him half back to the way he’d found her, the tingling spice that marked the otherness of hunters on the wind and in their home, set into the tatters of her clothes. No number of years could ever put enough distance between for his mind not to shy away from the memory of how she’d died, the images jumbled and too bright. 

If he tried, he could likely still find the place by the pond in Quebec where their cabin had stood. It may not have weathered the years, but he could stand again in the place where his baby had been taken from him, if he wanted to. Someday, it might do him good to see it in the green of summer, wildflowers on the bank that could have been descendants of the ones she used to weave into Cecily’s mane. Someday, he might be ready to try it. As far as he knew, no one had lived long to discover how many decades it took until surviving your child didn’t feel like an open wound. 

He hadn’t known how she would react, but Claudia didn’t pull away from him when he stood and moved close enough to squeeze her shoulder. The slight shift of her weight into his palm was all the encouragement he needed—she didn’t trust him like John, but she trusted him enough. 

“Come on; go lay down and let me watch him for a while. You’re exhausted.”

Claudia shook her head, but even that movement was tired. “I don’t know—I’m okay—”

“Just for a little while. If something changes or he wakes up all the way and asks for you, I’ll bring him right to you.” 

When her hand came up to squeeze his, he knew he’d convinced her. The triumph of it was almost as thick in his throat as the guilt. 

In the time it took her to fall asleep, he read to Stiles from the worn copy of _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ on his bedside table. It had the vague scent of Claudia’s perfume, her name written in elegant script inside the front cover. The tattering of the pages spoke to years of use, but the scrap paper marking Stiles’ place, though, was John’s, a ticket stub from _Creature from the Black Lagoon_. The date was in the corner, the name across the top. Even when the records didn’t matter to anyone but him he still kept them, his handwriting still neat, a stark contrast to Claudia’s flowing lines. 

When Claudia’s heartrate dropped off in sleep, Chris left the _Nautilus_ behind, and went to the kitchen. 

Being raised in a family of hunters, he’d grown up knowing lore. When he was first turned the thought that he would continue his family’s work would have seemed impossible to him, but years on it was hard to remember why. There was no substitute for decades of accumulated knowledge, no better way to track down the supernatural than possessing supernatural abilities yourself. He didn’t do it in the way his father or grandfather had, or with the voracious constancy he had at some points in his life, but he had been born a hunter, and at his core that had never changed, and never would. 

He held the knowledge of both sides, the patterns of competing predators whose weapons and remedies sometimes overlapped. Some of it was beyond him in anything more than an academic sense, now—he couldn’t touch mistletoe or holly if he’d wanted to, and he’d never be able to bring John roses, but the power of his own body was entirely under his control. He could use those powers to further the creation of his own kind with an exchange of blood, a ritual so old the origins had been lost, but it wasn’t his only option. Human blood could bolster his abilities, but his blood wasn’t without its own benefits. For a human, it couldn’t restore the way _he_ could restore—it wouldn’t have kept John from bleeding out, and he was fairly certain it couldn’t counter most poisons. Whether it could have saved Allison from what had surely been tuberculosis was uncertain—at the time, he hadn’t wanted to take the risk when turning her was safer. 

Stiles was barely more than a baby. Even with John’s permission, he wouldn’t have done it, even if it had been the only hope. As it was, there would have been plenty of hope without his help—children survived so often now, compared to the years of his own childhood. Still, if he could help those odds without hurting him, with a secret Stiles wouldn’t wouldn’t be conscious enough to betray, how could he resist? 

It was only blood. He could hunt again, once the boy was well. If he died, John would never be the same. The pieces of himself that he’d given over to Stiles would stay with him, unrecovered, and Chris could hardly bear the thought of seeing him incomplete. A hole with jagged edges was a terrible wound, a bottomless ache. 

The slice of the knife down the inside of his arm was so sharp as to be nearly painless; all the soreness centered on the pressure of the glass at the end, its hard pressure digging in with the force of his grip to be sure he caught every bit of the stream. In the yellow light that hung over the sink in the kitchen, the deep maroon of his blood barely looked unnatural. He watched the slow slide of it, thick and heavy. When it slowed to a trickle before the glass was half full, he retraced the wound again, opening it where it had begun to heal, twisting the tip at the end. The breath he took to steady himself was deliberately deep, his eyes fluttering closed only until the sharpest bite of the pain had passed. 

It was only blood. 

As sick and trusting as he was, it was nothing to coax Stiles to drink—he barely had to put any force into the command at all, only the faintest weight of the pressure he could use to hook his prey. 

One hand cradled the back of the boy’s head, the other firm around the glass he tipped to his lips. 

“Stiles, I need you to drink,” Chris said, a low murmur that soothed, and didn’t carry. “I brought you medicine. Be good and swallow while it’s warm.”

He only coughed and pulled back once, just a little, and it wasn’t hard to rub his thumb against the corner of his eye, nudging them closed again. 

“I don’t like—” Stiles started, mumbling and sleepy, fevered and uncertain. 

“No one does, but it helps. Swallow, _chéri_.” Smoothing his fingers down Stiles’ throat, by human rules, he should have felt something other than relief. By his father’s rules, at least. In the beastiary, it would have been listed as a forbidden treatment, carrying a taint of the supernatural that would stick to the drinker like a stain. A burr on a blade, a thorn catching wisps of the things that moved in the dark. 

It was true, or it was a load of shit peddled by overzealous hunters too afraid of what they didn’t understand to accept that it might save their lives. Either way, it was a risk he was willing to take. At worst, if Stiles had an affinity for the supernatural after this, so be it. 

Like he’d promised John during the war, he might not always be present, but they would never be without his protection. Nothing would get too close, not while he lived. If anything was drawn to this boy, Stiles would probably never know it. In all likelihood, he’d live his life oblivious. If Chris had to pay a few tolls for that, it would be more than worth it for a little security now. 

In the kitchen, he washed the glass and dried it, put it away and unrolled his sleeves. He’d healed, but he’d cut deep. There was a red line. Claudia might not have noticed, but John still looked at him. He could lie, but he’d rather not. Lying to John never stopped feeling like ash in his mouth, like his throat was closing. 

Back in the room, he picked up the book and started where he’d left off, reading until the wheeze in Stiles’ chest had settled into something deeper that didn’t scrape Chris’ nerves, a rhythm almost even. 

^^^^^

By the time Chris heard the cruiser down the road, Claudia had come back. She was asleep again, this time against the bed. It was awkward; her neck would hurt. From the slow tick of her heart, she slept deeper than before. Their senses might be dull compared to his, but even a human knew the scent of their own child, a marker of closeness that stretched beyond consciousness. 

Chris had left his sleeves down but opened the front of his shirt, climbed into bed to lean against the wall so Stiles could cuddle close to the cool of his chest, sapping some of the bite from the fever that lingered. He was so small. Tucked up against him, he almost felt weightless. With Claudia asleep, Chris had let his eyes burn, and remembered.

At 17, Allison had still fit into his lap when something hurt. She could tuck her head under his chin, her face in the hollow of his throat. Even as a human, she’d never felt heavy to him, not once. 

When the cruiser rattled into the driveway, his eyes were dry, closed through the sounds of John jamming the key in the lock, taking the stairs too quick. He barely stopped in the kitchen to leave his gun. 

Chris eyes only opened when the door did, catching John’s with a warning for quiet that he could see him accept with the droop of his shoulders. They only shared a roof a few times a year, and still communication with him was as effortless as it had ever been. 

Crossing the room, John kissed Claudia’s forehead, then came closer to reach Stiles. He lingered there, mouth pressed to the sweat at his hairline before he felt with the back of his hand. The fear in his scent twisted into Chris’ chest, sharp and deep. 

“I know he’s warm,” Chris said, a low rumble barely past a whisper. Stiles stirred, and didn’t wake. “I’ve been trying to bring his fever down, but he’ll want his daddy—”

Before he could begin to hand him over, John stopped him with a hand on Stiles back, firm and still careful, like the joints of his shoulders might at any moment fall apart. 

“No, he’s resting. If it helps with the fever—just keep him there. If he wants me when he wakes up,” John shifted onto the twin bed, easing his weight between where his wife rested her head on her arms and where Chris held his son. It wasn’t an easy fit, but he moved inch by inch. “I’ll be right here. I’ll be here when he wakes up.” 

The hollows under his eyes were dark. He’d worked the last 12 hours, and he hadn’t even stopped to get out of his uniform. He hadn't eaten.

Chris loved him so much that for half a second, he was sure his eyes had gone white. He was far too tired and weak to let his guard down so far. John’s scent laid against his heartbeat was already making his mouth water. The whisper instinct was loud in his own head, near insistent. 

_You fed his baby. He wouldn’t deny you._

Chris swallowed, jaw clenched tight against the pressure in his gums. He was so focused that the damp press of John’s lips to his temple took him by surprise, his body jerking quick and short at the jolt of it. 

Chris could feel the slight prickle of stubble, the heat of his breath. It was as close as they ever came, these days. Claudia knew about them, but there was knowing, and there was acting, and John had promised her they didn’t act on it anymore. She had never shown Chris suspicion, and he appreciated that. No matter what he wanted, he never planned to give her any reason to. 

Still, it was a fine line, and in the right light, Chris could see it blur. 

If John hadn’t lingered, hadn’t reached over to cup his cheek, it would have almost been brotherly. 

He pulled back a few seconds slow for that. 

“Thank you, Chris.”

“Don’t thank me,” Chris said, only a little rusty. “He’s family. Where else would I be?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. All the places you go when you’re not here that you don’t—”

“Shh.” With the uptick in Stiles heart, Chris shushed him, reaching over to lay his hand on the bed close enough that his knuckles brushed John’s thigh. “If he hears you too much, he’ll wake up. Let him rest. We’ll talk after breakfast.”

After breakfast, after dinner. After Stiles had started to improve. As soon as he was well, Chris would leave. As long as he was away all he wanted was to get back, but there were times when he stayed that the urge to go pressed under his skin like needles. Even if he hadn’t needed to hunt, he’d need space after this. It was all so claustrophobic, like a heavy cloth over his mouth, muffling him, pressing down. 

Maybe he would go to Canada, after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny!Stiles is sick, and Chris feeds him his own blood- which in this verse by itself will not make him a vampire, but will help him heal and could cause potential future mildish supernatural side effects.


	4. Beacon Hills, 12/66, [John + Stiles, Stiles/Derek, Chris/John]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not my favorite chapter of this- which is ironic, considering it's one of the ones I've planned longest. 
> 
> But, I'm posting it now, because I don't think it's gonna get better than it is XD I don't think smashing another scene onto this that doesn't carry the same...atmosphere/mood would fix what's bugging me about it- and I think what's bugging me about it is a combination of looking at some version of it since January, and also that this scene breaks the 'show don't tell' rule in some ways- it's largely a conversation, and largely a conversation about memory.
> 
> but all writing rules are just suggestions, really, and my gut instinct from the beginning would be that this would be a good way to do this. So, here it is. pls be kind, I guess, is the point of all of that, because my brain is not being kind lol

There was an expected order of events after making an attempt you knew beforehand was doomed to failure.

Stiles had known the evening wouldn’t be comfortable— telling his dad his best friend who he’d been in love with for probably longer than he’d ever admitted was likely a vampire wasn’t ever going to go smoothly. He’d prepared himself for every reaction from laughter to easy agreement because he already knew, but none of the preparing had really gotten him ready for how it felt in the moment to sit in the cold of his room five days before Christmas, hating his inability to keep his mouth shut.

His reasoning had been solid—Chris wasn’t a danger to them, but there was a very real possibility his life was in danger. He had, as of the hour he’d cornered his dad in the kitchen, been missing for three days. It didn’t matter that he’d said he was going out of town; there could be no doubt after the most recent threat to Derek and Scott that there was a hunter in town, and every hint they’d dropped made it clear they hadn’t come for werewolves. 

_The one we’re after is old, and clever, but he’s made a mistake. All you need to do is stay out of my way._

It would have been telling even if Derek didn’t know more than he was saying, but Stiles had seen the frustration in his eyes. Stiles didn’t have to hear his heartbeat to know that he already had the answer— he’d probably had it from before the first time he climbed into Stiles’ window. Chris had hated him on sight, but at the time he’d been so sure it was about his age. 

The deeper questions of how he kept himself alive and how he’d kept his secret for so many years would have to come later; Stiles had first only been focused on knowing for sure. There was no malice in it— and still, his dad’s words stung, ringing in his ears well past when he’d come upstairs.

_He helped raise you. He deserves better from you than this._

Stiles sniffed, rubbing first across his nose with the sleeve of Derek’s old basketball jacket, then at his eyes with the heel of his hand. It had been so cold lately the movement made him feel the stiffness of the back of his hand, the skin ready to crack, and bleed.

He’d bled around Chris dozens of times, easily. Hell, Chris had bandaged his wounds. If he was what Stiles was increasingly sure he was, he either had ironclad control, or he really just loved the humans he’d adopted that fucking much. Either answer made his stomach hurt. Chris had been there for them so many times, and where were they, now? 

Stiles was shut up in his bedroom pretending the heat wasn’t out; if he had to guess his dad was downstairs drinking. He wasn’t Derek’s to find; Derek had to watch out for his own family, and Stiles couldn’t blame him for that—family was supposed to look out for each other. Whatever he hoped he and Derek might someday be, if he wasn’t out looking for Chris, now, Stiles couldn’t blame him. 

He was the one who should be looking. Once he heard his dad close his bedroom door, he could slip out the window with a reasonable chance of getting away, and heading downtown where Derek had last seen the hunters looking. Without much to go on, he hadn’t wanted to do it alone. 

The phone on his nightstand had sat still since he’d come upstairs. He hadn’t spoken with anybody since he’d argued with his dad, not even Derek. The urge to call the number Chris had given them of the friend he said he’d be staying with was strong, but almost equally he didn’t dare. He was almost sure Chris wasn’t there; hearing it confirmed when he already felt helpless sounded like a panic attack waiting to happen. If he _was_ there, what the hell would Stiles say? 

_Hey, sorry it’s late, I’m upset because I told dad I think you’re a vampire and he’s mad at me._

_By the way, I think you’re a vampire, but it’s no big deal; I’m sure you’re a good one, but there’s werewolves and who knows what else in this town and I don’t know how to keep you safe. There’s hunters here; I think they’re after you. They can’t be after you. I won’t let them hurt you, but I don’t know what to do._

There wasn’t really a flow to it.

He was in the process of reaching for the handset when the door opened. He jerked back his hand without ever making contact.

His dad didn’t seem to notice.

He came to the edge of the bed with two mugs. One carried the scent of whiskey and coffee, the other had enough cream and sugar to make it near white. That one, he held out. It was Stiles’ favorite, from the summer Chris had taken them to Grand Teton National Park. When he had told Stiles it was different than the last time he’d been, Stiles had been imagining a time frame of years, not decades. If all of this eased over, if Chris was fine and they all went back to normal, he could ask again. 

His eyes stung. He looked down to blink them clear, and reached out to curl his hand around the mountain. “Thanks, dad,” he murmured, his eyes on his quilt. The stitching swam. “Listen,—”

“No, you listen.” His dad was softspoken again, the sharp edges that rose in him sometimes when his temper spiked too quickly already quelled. “I listened to you; you listen to me. Okay?”

“Yeah, dad. Okay.” It hardly mattered that he hadn’t _seemed_ to listen, at the time. Every time it had ever really mattered, he’d never let Stiles’ down. On some level, even mad, he was always listening. If it hadn’t been like that, Stiles never would have trusted enough to tell him in the first place. 

“You asked me if there was ever anything that had made me wonder about him, if I hadn’t ever seen anything strange—” his dad paused for a sip, slow and lingering. They were indoors, but it felt almost cold enough that his breath should have misted the ceramic, at least a little. “He saved my life.”

“I know; I’m not saying—”

“You’re not supposed to be saying anything at all right now; you’re supposed to be listening.” His dad’s smile was back, though; good natured if a little slight. Stiles would take it. “He saved my life, and he shouldn’t have been able to. I should have been dead. It was impossible, what he did— and I knew it at the time, but I explained it away because…” He gestured with his mug, his eyes meeting Stiles’.

The sincerity in them was stark, but Stiles didn’t see an ounce of fear.

“I was out of it. I had to have imagined it, right? What else could I believe? It had to have gone differently than it seemed like it had— and even if it hadn’t, I was alive, and the man I trusted more than anyone else had come for me when I should have been dead. I couldn’t repay that by questioning him. If there was something…something about him that I couldn’t explain, it was his business, and he wasn’t dangerous. Not to me— if he’d wanted me dead he could have just done nothing. It would have happened so easy.”

“You never really told me what happened.”

“Chris doesn’t like to talk about it—it’s easier for me than it is for him. My memory of most of it isn’t clear,” he said. He sipped his coffee, settling in, his weight sinking more into the mattress. The steam curled up from the rim, stirred by his breath. “We were in Italy. The powers that be higher than Chris had called for a retreat—but it was late in the evening, difficult terrain and too many people. It was chaos. I was grazed by a bullet—”

“Here,” Stiles said. He reached out easily, his palm pressing harder against his dad’s bicep when he nodded. He’d seen the scar a thousand times. He’d seen Chris cover it with his hand more than once, like he didn’t like looking at it. “It looks like it was pretty bad.”

“Graze is generous; the bullet went through and it didn’t carve a hole through the middle of my arm, but it hurt like hell, and it was bleeding like crazy at first—if not for the snow it would have been harder to see. In the dark it just felt wet.” His dad cleared his throat. His eyes when they met Stiles’ were soft. “We don’t have to talk about this; I know it’s hard for you, too—”

“It’s fine, dad, really—” Unwittingly, his fingers had tightened in the sleeve of his shirt. Stiles forced himself to let go. “It’s fine. You’re fine.” 

“I am; I have been for a long time.” There was fondness to it, but no condescension. Stiles’ worries were never a joke to him, not even when they didn’t make sense, even when they were long over. “It would have been alright if I’d been with Chris then, but we’d already been separated. I fell behind; this group of Nazi soldiers found me and I thought…this is it. I didn’t want to let them take me, but I wasn’t in shape for a fight. I tried anyway; it gets blurry after that, but I remember the pain in my leg when one of them cut me with his knife and then—I fell and hit my head, or one of them did it. I never could remember.”

Maybe, or he could, and he didn’t want to say—Stiles could see in the way he’d looked away that he was getting an abridged story, or at the very least a slightly embellished one. Part of him wanted to push; the rest of him never wanted a clearer picture than he already had of his dad bleeding and vulnerable, found by people dangerous enough to have tortured millions. He’d already felt nauseous, before, worrying about Chris. His stomach felt like a mass of knots. 

In an attempt to soothe it, he swallowed a gulp of coffee so large he nearly choked. 

“There were at least ten of them—probably more. I remember voices from every direction; I couldn’t have gotten up if I’d wanted to but my hands were tied—and then,” He paused, draining the last of his own mug. The smell of whiskey lingered even as he leaned over to set it on the nightstand. It had been a long time since he made his drinks that strong, beyond a glass straight here and there. “—I heard screaming. At first I thought the lines were moving again, that a platoon was coming through, but then I realized it wasn’t…it wasn’t an exchange of gunfire. It was…bursts of sound, then nothing but—” He hesitated, and Stiles couldn’t resist. 

“Screaming. Like…everyone with guns was being picked off by someone who didn’t need one,” Stiles said. His voice was hushed. It should have chilled him more than it did, but a wraith in the woods wasn’t the Chris he knew. The Chris _he_ knew had once come to find him when he was lost—that was a fuzzy memory of his own, but he could remember the stump of a massive tree, and a voice he didn’t recognize, and Chris pushing him back behind him. He was safety, protection from an unknown Stiles’ memory either shied away from or had never properly placed. 

Other than the man sitting inches away from him, he was the safest thing in the whole world that Stiles had ever known. Whether he liked it or not, the changes in his mother when she was sick had taken away some of her sense of safety. With Chris, it wasn’t like that. He had already been there, but when Stiles needed stability he’d stepped up. There was a debt in that Stiles couldn’t repay, though Chris would have never asked him to try. 

His dad’s nod was heavy. “Yeah. Exactly like that. The last few—I was half conscious. I remember them yelling to each other in German; I couldn’t understand it, but they sounded terrified. Everything faded into noise—the next thing I remember, they were gone, and I could hear—” His voice broke, unexpected. His eyes were clear, but he swallowed before he could start again. 

“Dad—”

His dad shushed him, wordless, one hand reaching over to squeeze his wrist. Derek’s jacket dulled the pressure, and still he could feel his heart start to slow. 

“I could hear Chris talking—I don’t know if he was talking to me or to himself; it wasn’t English. It was French. When I thought about it later in medical, my mind kept coming back to it. There was no one there for him to be talking to that he would have needed it. It wasn’t—there wasn’t a reason for it. It was like…”

“Like he couldn’t help himself,” Stiles murmured. “Like it was his first language.” 

Whatever he’d believed before, and whatever he believed then, his dad didn’t look surprised. On some level, he’d had the same thought, even he only held it in his chest. 

“Even without understanding it, hearing his voice—I knew I’d be okay. He was there; nothing would happen to me, and even if it did—I wasn’t afraid. But I do remember—I can’t be sure I remember it. But at the time, I thought,” He swallowed, fingers pinching hard for a moment at the bridge of his nose. The urge to prompt him gathered under Stiles tongue; he dug his nails into his palms to quell it. “When I opened my eyes and looked up at him, I could have sworn his eyes were white, and there was so much blood—but it was under the light of the moon and I was dizzy. He picked me up and carried me back; by the time I woke up again I was sure I’d remembered wrong and seen him after, that the blood was mine and his eyes just looked different with the angle and the moonlight. It all made sense.”

It made sense, except it hadn’t, really, because if the explanations he gave himself had held, he wouldn’t have circled back to wondering for over twenty years. It wouldn’t have been the first thing to come to his mind when Stiles brought up the thought that Chris might not be human. 

Stiles set his mug down in the space beside his dad’s, nudging it against the base of his phone. “I might not have started wondering if not for what I’ve learned from Derek—”

“We’re talking about that after this,” his dad said, low and firm and tired. “That’s not finished. You can’t just tell me that the man you’re still seeing even after we told you to wait is a _werewolf_ and not expect—”

“Can we not get sidetracked right now? Look, I get that you’re mad, and I know Chris is going to be mad—” The thought of telling him swooped low in his stomach, a strangely mingled sensation. Part of him wanted to avoid it; the rest of him would have been glad to hear him yell just to have him home. “—but that’s not the biggest problem right now. I’ve learned from being around him that all of this, supernatural beings, they follow certain rules. Among other things, vampires can’t touch holly. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it before, but when we were putting up the Christmas decorations, I dropped that garland on the porch and it was like—you know what his reflexes are like. It wasn’t just that he didn’t catch it, it was like he couldn’t—like he had to step back, and he didn’t even try to pick it up. He didn’t even try to walk around it—and then I started realizing he looks the same now as he did when I was 5, and you don’t, and—”

“Stiles.” It was pacifying, almost. Infinitely calmer than how he’d interrupted the first time Stiles had tried to explain. “I’m sorry for how I acted downstairs. I shouldn’t have yelled—and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I know how much you love him; I don’t doubt that for a second, and I know he doesn’t either.” 

Stiles tried to let it sink in. Alongside the worry, it could only reach so deep. _Did_ Chris know? He’d said it before, but maybe not enough. He couldn’t have placed the last time, not without wracking his brain. Maybe not even then. 

Swallowed by nerves, he brought his thumb to his mouth, unable to stop himself from gnawing at the dry skin on the edge of his knuckle. The anxiety travelled like a current, flowing down, jiggling his foot against the bed. 

“I didn’t want to believe you, because whatever this is—I can’t say there haven’t been things I’ve wondered about, and put away because I didn’t have an answer. Maybe I didn’t want one. You think I haven’t noticed—” His mouth opened and closed, considering. The faint color to his cheeks gave Stiles part of the answer before he said a thing. “He doesn’t have a mark on him, and I’ve seen him hurt. There are nights he leaves and doesn’t come back for hours—I think he doesn’t think I notice, but I have. It hasn’t worried me; I didn’t suspect—he would never be unfaithful. I don’t think he has it in him.” 

The truth of what he _was_ doing when he left would be another elephant in the room, if they got him back. When they got him back. 

“So what you’re saying is you do believe me,” Stiles said. “You just don’t want to.” 

“I believe that if he was a vampire—” He said the word so carefully, like it burned the roof of his mouth, or like a secret. Something hidden, held away from the light for safety or fear. “—I was bleeding when he found me. If there was such a thing, a vampire would have killed me. They wouldn’t have been able to resist.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t work like that. Not one that loves you.” In his mind, the image of the first time he’d seen Derek’s wolf flashed sharp and clear, black fur and amber eyes, teeth long enough to sink through his palm. The flash of Derek’s tongue, licking his wrist in supplication. 

The hand that hadn’t held a wedding ring for years flexed. Stiles couldn’t miss it, or the clench in his father’s jaw. Other than the details, Stiles wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. 

“I’m not saying he’s an animal. I’m just saying—if he was here, we could ask him about it, but he isn’t, and that might be because he’s in danger. If I’m right? He’s looked after us so many times, probably more than we know. We can’t just leave him for these people to track him down like he’s some kind of monster when we know he isn’t. You know he isn’t, dad—”

“I know he isn’t. Whatever else he might be, he’s not dangerous. Not to anyone who hasn’t earned it. I know him well enough for that.” Reaching out, he laid his hand on Stiles’ knee, squeezing it softly. It felt like a tether, and not one he minded. “I’ll find him. I’ll bring him back home, and we can talk—”

“But dad—”

“I’ll go talk to Talia Hale if I have to, but I’ll find him. I need you to stay here, do you understand? If I’m going out looking for him, I can’t be worried about both of you.” 

Stiles hated lying to him, really he did—especially after he’d apologized. He hated it, but there was nothing for it. Of the two of them, his dad might have experience with Chris, but _he_ had experience with the supernatural. If they couldn’t work together, then they’d have to work separately. It was too important to give up. 

Swallowing, he looked down at the bed, his nod quick. It was easier if he bit his tongue, and didn’t say the lie out loud. There were rules for non-magical creatures, too. If you didn’t put it out in the world all the way, kept the syllables to yourself, sometimes it felt a little less real. 

Given what he’d just admitted that he’d held onto for years, surely his dad would understand that. 


	5. Beacon Hills, 10/60  [John/Chris, E]

The hallway muffled Chris' steps, his care further softening them until he could barely hear his own passage. He almost never frightened John, but then, most of the time John expected him. Even when he shouldn't, even when he hadn't been there a moment before—so many times their eyes would meet, and it would seem that somehow, improbably, his mate had been waiting for him. 

It had been on Chris’ tongue before to ask what John felt, in those moments, if he carried within his human bones, still blood rich and living, some shadow of the eternal compass buried sharp and sticking in Chris' own, solid and cold. They weren't made the same, but they were made for each other, and really , he didn't have to ask if John felt that. What precisely he felt Chris might never know, but it was undeniably something. It was enough. 

Outside the door, the scent of bourbon was almost painfully strong, sharp in the way of bars and chemical plants, unwanted in such volume layered over John’s familiarity. Chris breathed through it, and turned the knob. 

"Stiles—"

"No, I just put him to bed."

When John had first spoken, his eyes remained on his glass, but even his slowed reflexes jolted at the jarring realization that the person creaking open his door in an otherwise empty house wasn't his son. Still, either he was wasted beyond what Chris had ever seen , or quicker to absorb the truth than any other man would have been. His uniform was still on, his gun on the dresser by his badge and the bottle, but he hadn't gone for it. He blinked at Chris instead, not with quiet horror reserved for a ghost, but the flash fire hope of a mirage. It barely lasted, but Chris had seen it. 

Even there and gone, John’s obvious need for him tugged on his instincts more surely than any physical tether ever could have. He could weather his own thirst; he’d long ago learned to. John’s was different, harder to bear. Whatever the circumstances, he would always seek to quench it, the thrum of instinct in his chest pushing him harder, driving him to please. 

“Are you here?” John said. It was too matter of fact, too easy, too genuine. 

The tick in Chris’ jaw had nothing to do with venom. With the door closed behind him, he crossed the room to take a seat on the footstool in front of John, quick and quiet. “Does the sheriff know you’re hallucinating?”

“Oh, fuck off—”

“Does your doctor?”

“You know, if I was hallucinating, I wouldn’t go for taking you back to a goddamn drill sergeant. I mean if you are a hallucination, you’d be the most judgmental, self righteous—”

In the middle of a gesture kept half hearted to not spill his glass, Chris’ hand snatched out to grab John’s wrist. He couldn’t say that it was the hardest he’d ever held him—that might have come in the war, or the last night they’d had together. It might have been the days before Claudia’s funeral, when they had stood alone in a grim parlor that smelled so strong of the unnatural dead that Chris had felt sick to his stomach, and still, John’s pain had hurt him more. It might not have been the closest he’d ever come to giving himself away and going too far, but his grip was tighter, and harder than it should have been. 

John was undoubtedly far too drunk to properly notice, and still, it stopped him short. Chris didn’t let himself linger on the thought, on the moment of wondering if for just an instant, he’d made John feel like prey—or if he might in that moment have been any man whose lover was righteously angry, weighed down with worry so sharp the pressure of it was more than his joints alone could bear. 

Could he call himself John’s lover, when by rights they hadn’t touched each other like that since before the wedding?

That question, at least, was easy. He could; he had to. He was Chris’ mate; of course he was his lover. He could never be anything less. 

“You know I’m here. You’re drunk, but you’re not that drunk. You never have been, even when you want to be,” Chris said, low and even. Looking at him, he was sure of it. Tired as he was, there was too much hunger in those circles under his eyes. Chris knew the look of a hunter strung out, too long lost on the trail of his prey. John had been stalking a moment’s peace since Claudia’s mind had started to crumble. “You know me, and you’re going to listen to me. This has got to stop.”

John swallowed. In the low light, the rough edges of his days old stubble cast his throat in shadows unfamiliar since the war. It was a difference between the boy in the trenches and the man who’d come home—the boy hadn’t always had a choice, but given time for his own preferences, John stayed clean shaven. He made the effort. 

“I’d already put Stiles to bed,” he murmured. There was guilt enough there to hardly need correcting, the clear certainty that if he said it low enough, he might forget the truths that he already knew. 

Unwilling to coddle him, and lose him, Chris couldn’t let the lie stand. “No, you told him to go to bed, and you know he didn’t stay. You know he does it; you know he checks on you, even if you don’t let him see you knowing. He’s smarter than to leave you unwatched, and you’re smarter than to be so oblivious, and I’m not going to let you sell either one of you short—and I’m not going to let you kill yourself either. Neither is he. He’s every bit as stubborn as you, but I’ve got more experience and less tolerance, and I’m telling you, this stops now.”

John’s eyes flicked toward the bottle, back again when Chris let go of his wrist, and took his glass. 

Rather than set it out of reach to tempt him, Chris tipped it back, and swallowed the bourbon down. It was cheap, uninspiring, but the hint of John’s mouth on the rim made his own water. 

In the silence, John’s eyes made the circuit of bottle, to glass, to Chris’ eyes, to the door. Beyond the quick movement to place the glass by the bottle, Chris waited him out in near stillness. Even the breath he drew in didn’t come properly deep until John shifted forward, breaking the cycle to lean his elbows onto his knees, palms over his eyes. 

“What are you doing here, sarge?” In the years since they’d come back to solid ground, the old title almost always slipped out of him with a joke, curled around a smile just pointed enough to tease. Here and there, it came softer, as much a private endearment as it had ever been, one safe for public spaces where to hear the nuance of _beloved_ , you’d have to be listening. This fit neither pigeon hole, but stretched somewhere between them like a filament of web. Too thin and wavering to be a good natured jab, too hollow for an _I love you_. 

It felt, instead, like the way John had looked at him in Italy, blood in eyes too stark against his pale face, near black in the moonlight. He’d been fading out, but for that last moment he’d looked up at Chris like a man seeing God.

So many of his kind cultivated worship, but Chris had never wanted it. He’d spread his own legends, and there were times awe and fear had been tools that he needed, but he’d never had the faintest wish to put himself up on anyone’s pedestal—certainly not John’s. They were mates; they were equals—and still, he was, metaphorically at least, only a man. 

Could he deny that his heart hadn’t leapt into his throat at that much trust, so eager to prove himself worthy of it that in that moment he felt he could have killed a hundred men if it meant John was every bit as safe with him as he believed himself to be?

No. No, he couldn’t. 

“What do you think I’m doing?” Chris murmured. Leaning in, his fingers curled around John’s wrists, holding his hands in place. With a soft press of each thumb, he could feel the pulse of John’s heart in his wrist. They taught men in the army to never take a pulse with your thumb, because you’d end up feeling your own. He was far too old for wishing for a heartbeat that could match to John’s so easily, one that wasn’t dependent on when he’d fed, and still, the hint of wanting rose and fell within him like a swell. Too deep to distract him, too present to deny. “I’m doing exactly what I said I would. I told you I was going away to get some shit in order, and then I’d be back for good. I’m here to take care of you, and Stiles. From what Stiles tells me, he’s been trying to do the first part himself.”

Chris held on through the first twitch of muscle under his fingers, only shifting his grip when John lifted his head. This close, the red in his eyes looked painful, raw. Chris slid his hands higher, until his thumbs rested in John’s palms. The curl of John’s fingers around them was instinct, or choice. Just then, it didn’t matter; either would have warmed Chris, even with as little blood as he was running on.

“I never asked him—” John started, an attempt at a lie of omission neither one of them believed.

“You didn’t have to, but it stops. It’s stopping now, because I’m not losing you. I refuse. And even if you don’t think about me—”

“Chris—”

Whatever the look in his eyes just there would have been, Chris couldn’t bring himself to read it. He pressed on, nails only just digging in to the thick skin on the backs of John’s hands. “I’m not asking you to swallow this down; I know you’re a mess. I’ve _seen_ you be a mess, and right now, I’d almost say you were fucking entitled, but you aren’t. You don’t get to be entitled to fall apart, because you have a _kid_. You have a _son_ , and he’s alive, and he trusts you, and you are not his responsibility. He’s yours.”

The moment that John almost fought him was so visible. It hit his eyes like a strike of flint, chased by a hint of tension that could have caught—

But their eyes locked, and held, and against that opposing force the tension wasn’t strong enough. 

“Of course he’s mine,” John said, but the fight wasn’t there. “I’m trying—”

“I know you are, but you have to do better than that. And I’m not asking you to do it by yourself.”

John had, technically, only cheated on Claudia twice. Once when Chris had come back to him from months away after he’d been sure to stay gone long enough for John to reconnect with her, and again the night before his wedding. They hadn’t had sex, then, though in retrospect they might as well have. There had been no less charge between them for the lack of follow through, and nothing about the wedding would have changed if they had. Still, it had seemed at the time a box they couldn’t open again. One last kiss, though, was an ask Chris couldn’t keep himself from making, even though he’d made the argument to himself the entire evening over dinner it could only hurt them both. 

In the end, he couldn’t help it. They’d stood together smoking in the darkness, on the edges of the parking lot of a church where in just hours, John would say vows that would put a divide between them he fully expected to last to the end of his life. They were the last; everyone else had gone, and the pressure and possibility of that moment pushed so hard on Chris his eyes had damn near flashed white. 

He’d accepted that he might hate himself for it, and let himself ask, with space still between them at first to give John the chance to tell him no. 

_Let me kiss you. Just once more, and I won’t ask again._

He’d been absolutely certain, then, that the utter defiance in John’s eyes when they welled wet with tears he didn’t shed would haunt him for the rest of his life. 

_You could have asked me every day for the rest of my life. I told you that, and you didn’t want it._

Rather than argue, and explain again why he couldn’t offer John the life he deserved, Chris had given up, and kissed him. When he’d been so certain it was the last, pressing him up against the car and kissing him slow and deep had brought an ache almost as deep as the pain he’d felt telling John to drive away after, with every instinct in his chest rising to a fever pitch of possession. He held a claim over John that no one else ever could; the animal in him would never be able to understand why Chris ever let him go. 

When John pressed forward to kiss him then, with near desperate force, his mind at first skipped back to that parking lot so hard he could almost feel both places at once, his teeth on John’s lip, blunted and careful; John’s teeth in the present, haphazard and sharp against his own.

Pulling back hadn’t gotten any easier. With John, it was never, ever a question of want. 

“John,” Chris said, his head shaking once when he realized he wasn’t sure how to continue, how to explain. There was too much he could have said, and none of it while John was like this. “Come on. Let’s get you in bed.”

“Don’t do that to me again—” John’s hands wrapped around the arm Chris had used to push him back, fingers walking up higher to tug him back in. 

“You’re drunk—” It was a reminder for John, and for himself. John’s judgement was clouded; he couldn’t allow his own to be—though arguably, around this man, it always was, and ever would be. There could be no headier drug than his scent, beyond the taste of his blood—and that was a height he would never fully know. “And you’re grieving. If this happens again, with me and you, it’s not happening like this.”

“You think I don’t know what I want—”

“I think if you stood up you’d fall over. If you still want to ask me tomorrow when you’re sober—"

“You think I haven’t wanted to ask you sober, every time you come back?” John cut over him, loud enough to carry, loud enough to knock him back. Loud enough, perhaps, that Stiles might have heard—but if he had, the bed down the hall didn’t creak. There was only the ringing, sudden silence between them, edged in the harsh exhale just before John stood. 

He wasn’t steady, but he didn’t fall, and the finger he pointed at Chris didn’t shake. 

“You think I haven’t thought about this? That I didn’t—every time you were here, that I didn’t think—she knows. She knows, so what would she say if I told her I still—that I loved you, too, and I never stopped?” The waver in his voice didn’t sound like weakness. There was too much certainty, too much conviction—age didn’t matter; there were moments Chris could look at him and still see the man he’d met years ago, so much fire in his veins that sometimes it bled out around his edges. “I thought—would it matter so much if I followed through, because I never stopped thinking about it? I never did—how much worse would it be to be with you again when it wouldn’t change how much I already wanted to? I’ve carried that for years; I’ve never stopped carrying it—and you think, what? That I’m going to wake up tomorrow and feel I betrayed her memory because of you when I—when even when she was here—”

Unable to bear the dip of pain in his voice, Chris was on his feet before he could doubt. Reaching out, he gripped the front of John’s shirt to steady them both, and fought the drop of his fangs at the skip in John’s heart. Now wasn’t the time. For _that_ , there would never be a time. 

“You loved her, too,” Chris said, because he had to. He couldn’t let John doubt—he couldn’t let himself hope.

“Yeah, I’m not confused about that. I never said I didn’t.” The ability for his cleverness to sound cutting even when his eyes were wet had to be John’s, and John’s alone. “And I never said I wasn’t a mess. I’m not handling this. I feel guilty as hell about a lot of things, how conflicted I felt about how much to tell about you included—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to regret anything tomorrow if you stay with me now. I’ve never regretted you.” John’s breath hitched, a match to the near involuntary flex of Chris’ fingers against his chest. “Not once.” 

Twice, Chris had had it in him to walk away John. Once at the Knight’s Valley Inn, and again in the parking lot of the Beacon of Hope Methodist Church. It had taken everything he had. If tried very, very hard, he might could do it again—he could deny himself, and serve no purpose. At least, it was easier, now, to tell himself that denial wouldn’t help—he’d given John a chance at his picket fence, and it had failed. If he needed an excuse to keep him always within arm’s reach, now he had it. 

He was selfish enough to take it; he’d have been a fool to miss it. If he felt guilt afterward, he’d have decades to dwell on it. When John was lost to him, he could take the time, and punish himself properly. 

For the moment, he tightened his grip, and yanked John in to kiss him again. 

The shock of heat from his mouth was enough to make him moan, as sudden and overwhelming as the closeness of his scent, the uptick in his heartbeat. If he focused, really focused, he could feel the shift under John’s skin when he raked his nails up his forearms, blood drawn to the surface like it was rising toward his touch. As aroused as he was, it felt like a dangerous magic. 

The longer they kissed, the stronger John’s scent became, like the stripping down of layers of paint to reveal the core beneath. Getting him out of the uniform took with it the crowds and stale sweat and gun oil of the station; his arousal pitched higher and edged out the alcohol. It was never quite normal, never all the way to what he remembered, but it was right enough to bring the sweet ache to his jaw that only John could, the urge to drink that was only half hunger. 

Everything in him had for years cried out for this—not only the touch of John’s hands, but the affirmation of the bond, the settling of an anchor that never stopped tugging at him when they were apart. Before John, he had known intimately the instincts to feed, to hide and to hunt. The pull to his mate was still new, even years on; its ferocity could still shock him, an overwhelming power he’d never believed in, until it overtook him. 

They could not touch each other enough to sate their impatient hands, not his or John’s, not even pressed full together hips to thighs, his body’s chill warming to John like an iron. For all the desperation in John’s clinging hands and the eagerness of his mouth, though, the bourbon had made his body too sluggish, its weight on his blood too heavy. His cock couldn’t answer to his needs, rising only half heartedly despite his swearing and unmistakable eagerness, his pleasure thick on his scent and in the high pitch of his desperate sounds when Chris pressed hard against him. 

For a moment, only a moment, the thought flitted into Chris’ mind of how hard John might come under his teeth. He had done his best to never too closely imagine it, but just then it was near impossible not to—to feel him squirming, striving, and not think how easily it might happen if Chris worked him up enough, if he nudged him so close to the edge that at the slip of his teeth into John’s throat, the euphoria of the venom and the pressure would hit him so hard and fast he would have to come.

To hide the white of his eyes, Chris closed them, and buried his face against John’s throat. There, he breathed in the scent of him, short and sharp and desperate breaths. He allowed himself the weakness of licking over and over against his pulse, his moans low and hungry and deep. With John drunk and distracted by the rub of Chris’ thumb just under the head of his cock, teasing an orgasm out of him even half hard—if the barest prick of fangs brushed against his neck before Chris turned his head into the pillow, surely he’d never remember. 

Surely not, when after, his eyes couldn’t even stay open. 

When John woke, it wasn’t yet light. His sleep had been short, and fitful; Chris hadn’t looked away from him once. When he came awake quick, the way he squinted in the dark looked like it hurt. 

“I want to stop,” he said, as if they’d never stopped talking, and the bottle still sat between them. His voice scratched, like his throat was full. “I know Stiles—I want to stop, but when I’m here by myself—”

“You won’t be. I’m staying.”

“Staying, like—”

“Staying. Like you asked me to. I won’t go again; if I do I’ll come back. It won’t be the same. You won’t be alone.”

Another time, they might argue; John might push. It might be coming, in the future—but in the moment, John’s acceptance rippled down his body like a sigh, smoothing everything from the corners of his eyes to the curve of his feet. They pressed against Chris’ calves, tucking close. 

Chris pulled him closer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming back to this after awhile away from it was kind of nerve wracking...so if this wasn't as good as the other parts like I'm afraid it isn't, please don't tell me lol I hope you enjoyed it


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